


and you spoke of innocence

by poetatertot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 01:28:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11681169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetatertot/pseuds/poetatertot
Summary: The world may end, but the spirit of their love will never die.It’s never too late,Lance decides.We have forever to find eachother again and again.





	and you spoke of innocence

**11:56p.m.**

 

“Four minutes to midnight,” Lance whispers, rolling over on his side. The mattress squeaks pitifully beneath their sweaty bodies, rusty springs straining under the extra weight, but he can’t find anything left in him to care. The surrounding houses have long gone silent, desolate once stripped of their inhabitants and every belonging inside. There’s nobody left to hear them.

The full moon casts bright silver streams through the balcony glass and refract off of every surface to turn the living room in a prismatic galaxy. Muted rainbows dance across Keith’s pale skin, lighting up every pinprick of sweat left on his bare back. Lance lies there and absorbs all of him as best he can: reds and blues and purples sliding across his shoulders, curving from the nodes of his spine, spilling across half an angled face like splashing watercolors. He is everything Lance could have ever dreamed of and more.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, tucking his pillow further under his chin. Even after all these months — frantic months of storing supplies, paranoid evenings of listening to the world fall apart beyond their front door, hot days spent hiding as smoke and fire razed earth and sky — Keith still has the capacity to blush. Lance can see it through his flush, blooming pink like the roses his mother used to grow. He repeats the words again just to revel in the flavor of that truth. The world will end, and Keith will still be as beautiful as the day he’d met him.

Keith’s lips part to taste salt, breathing the shared air between them. His hair, grown out to brush his collarbones, spills like ink across the pillow; Lance can’t help but reach out to twine a finger around one soft strand, tugging gently. Keith’s mouth curves into a full, bashful smile as he reaches out as well, hand curling around Lance’s wrist. There he can feel his husband’s racing heartbeat beneath brown, scarred flesh. _Ba-dump. Ba-dump._ He taps one finger to the rhythm, the last beat he’ll ever feel and the pattern he’s grown to love the most.

“So are you.” Lance savors how rough his lover’s voice has dipped, gravelly from their love-making, throat undoubtedly sore from ministrations. Raw and fervent as his intentions, his actions, his love itself. Lance can’t remember when Keith’s voice became the source of his dreams, his safety even when everything fell to chaos, but he thanks whoever is listening that it’s his. His alone, just as everything he has to give is Keith’s.

 

**11:57p.m.**

 

Keith drags calloused fingers over the line of Lance’s chin, admiring the bone structure beneath. Even now, after everything they’ve been through his skin is cared for and soft as a baby’s. He can remember a time where he might have made fun of the Cuban boy for keeping up such maintenance — what was the point of self-care if their lives were forfeit — but he appreciates the painstaking habit now; though Lance’s arms and legs may be covered in knotted tissue, abdomen split by a single, thick gash that took far too long to heal, his face is as smooth and serene as the day they saw the end coming. There are no lines between eyes, no divots but his laughter lines around eyes and mouth. Keith has always admired Lance for that: the strength to smile, even when everything crumbled to nothing.

“What do you think the others are doing?” Lance whispers, breaking him out of his reverie. Their glass windchimes paint half of his face in ultramarine, making his eyes stand out even further. Keith takes his hand and feels the faintest of tremors in his fingertips. “Do you think they’re safe?”

“Safe as they’ll ever be,” Keith murmurs. He leans in, presses a soft kiss to the tip of Lance’s nose. “Didn’t Pidge say something about a rooftop? And Allura wanted to lay in her garden, one last time, with Coran.”

“That’s right.” Lance shifts on the bed, sending the dark blues seeping across his ear into his hair. “And Hunk was going to be with his mothers. They were going to make dinner together, like Shiro and his dad.” His mouth curves up at the edges, eyes crinkling into those familiar, gentle lines. “‘A big, awesome feast,’ he called it.”

Keith can’t help but smile too at the memory of friends, steadfast and strong in spite of all that unraveled. He can see them easily in his mind’s eye, hear them speak and argue and laugh as if they’re still there in their livingroom. The traces of them exist here even now: crumpled foil from a batch of cookies, scattered photos from a camera Pidge managed to dig out of someone’s closet. Lilies on the coffee table, fragrant and pink. An old pair of binoculars to look at the stars, abandoned by the window.

“Safe,” Lance murmurs, nestling up close to press his forehead against Keith’s. Their gazes blur together into vague shapes and colors, lips mingling as they breathe the same air and taste each other gently. “Just like us.”

 

**11:58p.m.**

 

Keith pulls back just enough for their eyes to adjust on each other’s details: minutiae of color, tiny flecks that mosaic together to create rings and sweeping shades of cerulean and violet; soft, feathering eyelashes that are almost blonde at the ends, bleached from days in the sun; tiny, infinite ridges and threads that weave to create windows to the soul. He stares into those pupils, dark enough to devour his reflection whole, and swallows.

“Do you think there’s an afterlife?” He hates the weakness of this admission so close to the end, for the briefest of moments despises the powerlessness they have over this situation, over _everything._ He’s spent so long living in the moment, desperately clawing at the rungs of life’s ladder to survive, that he doesn’t know how to let go. Where will they go from here? _Is_ there somewhere to go? The ground beneath them has fallen away and soon they will be gone too, but Keith doesn’t want that. He’s never been one for giving up on anything.

He watches as Lance mulls over the words, eyes barely creasing around the edges as he slips into his thinking face. Keith can’t bear to dwell over his own shame; his hands, suddenly weak, trace over the angles of Lance’s collarbone, his shoulder, his arm. He lets his hand fall to the curve of Lance’s waist, resting in the beautiful dip there that he’s made his home. Lance blows out a soft sigh and smiles.

“I’m not sure,” he admits. He leans in for a moment to brush warm lips over Keith’s, hand sliding down to tangle with his. “But if there is, I think we’ll be there together. I’ll go anywhere for you.” He pauses, a smile flitting across his features, and Keith’s heart _aches._ “Even into hell.”

“I don’t know if that’s comforting,” Keith replies drily, but the weight in his lungs eases up ever so slightly.

“To be honest,” his husband continues, “I think that it’s more likely that we’re just— I don’t know. Born again.” He tilts his head into the pillow, teeth gleaming in another bashful smile. “I like the idea of that more. So what if it’s over right now? We’ll be born again, over and over, in other places, at other times.” Lance wets his lips. “We’ll find eachother again. I’m sure of it.”  
  
“You promise?” Keith whispers. He squeezes Lance’s hand extra tight, hard enough to feel his pulse. “You’ll try to find me?”

Lance nuzzles up close, nose brushing the curve of Keith’s neck, lips pressing into the hollow of his throat. Keith shudders under the soft trail of his tongue sliding through the salt there, the happy sigh as he savors the taste of Keith’s skin. “I promise.”

He’s so sure, so confident that they’ll come together again. Keith feels the familiar burn of tears behind his eyes, raised by the sudden, crushing strength of his desperation; he wants to believe the way Lance does, to have that peace in moving on. Surely, surely, the universe wouldn’t be so cruel to give them just one chance? _Let Lance be right_ , he thinks desperately, one hot tear sliding down his cheek. _Please. I want to come back, even if it’s just one more time._ Even though he knows one more lifetime could never be enough. Even though a million lifetimes could never be enough.

 

**11:59p.m.**

 

Lance feels the tears more than he tastes them. The gentle wetness trickles from Keith’s jaw to his ear, sliding along the ridge inside, and Lance sucks in one heavy breath. His heart stutters in his chest, trembling with weakness he’s tried so hard to quell. _I won’t let it take over_ , he thinks staunchly. _It’s too late now._

He runs his mouth against that wetness, tasting salt, following the path up to soft cheeks, to fluttering, wet eyelashes. Keith’s eyes are glassy with tears, huge and violently purple against the darkness. He’s so bright with life, so _alive_ , that the idea of that flame snuffing out seems impossible. _We go somewhere else_ , he tells himself. _We have to._

“Don’t cry, love,” he whispers. But his lips tremble where they press, suddenly feverish, over cheeks and eyelids and forehead; his fingers shake again as they run through soft, dark hair, lavishing the roots with a feverish passion akin to their prior hour. “Don’t cry. This isn’t the end.”

He slides onto his back enough to grasp both of Keith’s hands in his own, to bring them to his chest so Keith can feel his heartbeat. _Ba-thump. Ba-thump._ He smiles, brave even in nakedness, brave even in the face of everything that should have stripped it from his being. “See?” He whispers. “Heart’s still beating. It isn’t over yet.”

Keith smiles through his tears, watery but warm, and Lance’s heart swells to the point of bursting. His lover’s arms flex and pull him forward so that he’s nearly on top of Keith; his head rests on his chest, ear pressed right to where his heart pumps blood desperately, defiantly. Legs tangle, arms tangle, and Lance closes his eyes to savor that rhythm one last time. _Ba-thump. Ba-thump._

 _It’s never too late_ , he decides. _We have forever to find eachother again and again._ And this time, he’s absolutely sure.

“I love you, Keith,” he whispers. He feels the gentlest of stutters as Keith sucks in a deep breath beneath him, the words weighty and whole as they’ll ever be. “I love you.”  
  
“I love you too, Lance.”

They close their eyes against the world. The prisms of the glass windchimes shimmer on, the stars glimmer against the black heavens beyond the balcony, but they don’t see it. All they need is the music between them, steady and rhythmic as time’s ticking to the end.

_Ba-thump._

_Ba-thump._

_Ba—_

**Author's Note:**

>  _"Together we wait for space / Together we wait for silence_  
>  And under your breath / You spoke of innocence"
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://poetatertot.tumblr.com/)


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